This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

In 1972, I attended the U.S. Army's military police school at Fort Gordon, Ga. I was 19 years old and an even bigger idiot than I am right now. Hard to imagine, I know.

Most of the MP training consisted of learning how to guard gates, quell bar fights, salute officers and shine my boots, including once with my tongue while doing pushups.

Note: Polishing boots has never held much interest for me, something immediately apparent to my drill sergeants and instructors.

Other than being raised by a cop and getting arrested a couple of times myself, MP school was the sum total of my police experience before I actually became a cop in April of 1978.

Whereas the Army trained me for nine weeks to be an MP, there was zero training to become a civilian police officer. All I had to do was be interviewed by the chief of police, shake hands with the mayor, buy a uniform and show up for work.

Back then, agencies weren't required to send police officers to the academy until the officers had worked for 18 months. I never understood the logic.

It wasn't unheard of for small towns to pass a badge around their city workers so everyone could take an 18-month turn being the cop. This way they never had to fund the training.

Turning untrained people loose with a badge and a gun is unthinkable now, but it made perfect sense to the state legislature back in the pioneer days.

Clueless as I was for the first year I was a cop, I never shot anyone. Later, when I was trained, I didn't shoot anyone either. Couple of dogs, several cows, too many deer to count, a goat, and a skunk I wish that I hadn't, but no people.

Cops killing people back then was relatively rare. To the best of my recollection, it happened maybe a dozen or so times. It happened, but not to the extent it seems to happen lately.

So it's fair to demand an accounting of the increase in police shootings. Nobody, including other cops, wants cops who are out of control. The police should be held to account for their actions.

The question is why this is happening. The view for some seems to be that the police have suddenly become trigger-happy. For them, it isn't a societal issue. It's a police issue.

I don't know. Like all of us, police officers are a product of society. I didn't have any training when I became a cop. Know what else I (and society) didn't have back then?

We didn't have meth easily cooked by idiots, murderous street gangs, a brand of music that glorified violence, porn that degraded women and was instantly available to young people, and video games that turned mass slaughter into entertainment for children. I don't need to mention Hollywood, do I?

Is there a corollary between the rise in all of that and recent police shootings? I don't know. Here's what I do know.

Of the 25 worst mass shootings in America, just two occurred (1949, 1966) before I became a cop. Thirty-one people died in them.

During the 11 years I was a cop, the number of mass shooting rampages on this list doubled, and so did the number of victims. Scary, but it gets worse.

In the 11 years (1989-2001) following the end of my police career, the number of mass shootings listed climbed to six, totaling 73 victims.

Finally, in the 12 years since, the number of mass shootings on this list skyrocketed to 13, with a total of 168 victims. Incidentally, this number doesn't include our own Trolley Square massacre, which, horrible as it was, didn't even make the top 25 worst shooting rampages in America.

Something's wrong out there, people. The increased number of police shootings sounds alarming, but I suspect it's just a byproduct of what's actually wrong with the rest of us.

Robert Kirby can be reached at rkirby@sltrib.com or facebook.com/stillnotpatbagley. Find his past columns at http://www.sltrib.com/lifestyle/kirby/